Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic interviews with four Chilean women who lived in exile in London (of whom two decided to return), this study reveals how significant home possessions – transported and/or acquired during the exile – allow them to negotiate in the everyday their belonging to two worlds – the one they came from and the one they settled into –, and even beyond them, refurbishing their identities. From a material culture approach, I argue that these home possessions are transformed into tangible cultural heritages of their migratory experiences, by mobilizing and transporting memories and cultural elements with which they identify. In addition, they allow the appropriation of their private spaces, since these objects mediate relations with both the city of origin and the host city, materialising migrants’ identities and memories. This chapter contributes to understand how migrants, through the objects that unfold or remain invisible in their homes, have transmuted an experience of displacement into multiple ways of belonging.